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In the Know with Fr. Joe

From Bishop Mengeling

Dating - The Path to True Love?

"I have a date!" This can be one of the most anticipated or feared statements you will ever make. I guess it depends on your perspective. Why should such a sentence bring so much emotion into one's heart and soul? Probably because meeting new people and revealing a bit about who we really are can be a risky proposition.

3 Questions to Think About:
1 Does the dating experience often fill you with excitement or fear?
2 Do you know people who treat dating as a game? How do you deal with them?
3 How do you bring God's love into the lives of people you meet?

4 Ways to Discover the Wonder

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." (Jn 15.12-13)

1) Your life is a journey. Where are you going? What are you doing? Or maybe more importantly, who are you meeting? That is what the journey is all about - making connections and forming relationships with people. So how do teens all around the country often accomplish this? They go on a date.

2) Getting to know who people really are is a great experience, almost as great as getting to know yourself. Finding a match, making a connection, and discovering someone with whom you like to spend time is well worth the anxiety and fears that often come with the dating territory.

3) It is all about entering into relationships. Relationships with people are a lot like your relationship with Jesus - or at least they should be. You need communication, respect, and love. Honesty, openness, and trust are also good. Relationships with others are how we experience our likes and dislikes, as well as finding places of trust and comfort.

4) Challenge yourself to meet new people and find out who they really are. Most people challenge themselves very hard in sports and academics - why not do it with your relationships? Leave the people you meet better off because they have met you. That's part of being a Christian.

Avoiding the Down Side of Dating

Dating can also very easily get turned into a social thing - a game. It too often becomes a popularity contest. And in many communities and schools it becomes the age-old excuse to experience "Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll". This happens when our focus gets twisted away from building relationships and turned into a selfish form of just wanting to "have fun".

There are 4 key ingredients needed to stop dating from becoming a game:

1 We need courage to stand up to those who treat people as playthings.
2 We must respect others and ourselves.
3 We should create friendships by truly getting to know other people.
4 We have to trust in God that He will take care of us as we walk this path with Him.

Yes, it is tough not to get dragged down by peer pressure. With a little faith and prayer, though, it is easy to get back on the proper path as we continue on the journey. As I said before, it is all about meeting people. And when you finally come across that person with whom you want to spend your life, your journey will then take you down a different road.

Continue the Journey

Having been married almost five years now, I have found that the journey continues. However, it is a somewhat different path I am following now. I have no "social life" in the common sense of the term. And the only reason I know anything at all about what is currently popular is because I am a teacher by trade. Yet my life is still a party. With my faithful wife and two bundles of energy (my children) I try to live life to the fullest and spread God's love to the best of my abilities.

So my humble advice to you is to enjoy your journey, but do so safely. Have the courage to treat people with respect, take the time to get to know people as they really are inside, and always remember that you are not traveling alone. Jesus is walking there beside you, hoping to be your friend and wanting to have those ever-important conversations with you. As people come in and out of your life, the challenge is to leave them in a better place than where they were before they met you. And the simplest way to ensure that is to leave them with Christ's love.

Back to Our 3 Questions:
1 Does the dating experience often fill you with excitement or fear?
2 Do you know people who treat dating as a game? How do you deal with them?
3 How do you bring God's love into the lives of people you meet?

by Rod Hetherton